Abílio Fernandes (19 October 1906,

Guarda, Portugal Guarda () is a city and a municipality in the District of Guarda and the capital of the Beiras e Serra da Estrela sub-region in Norte Region, Portugal, northern Portugal. The population in 2021 was 40,126, in an area of with 31,224 inhabitants in ...

– 16 October 1994,

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ), officially the City of Coimbra (), is a city and a concelho, municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2021 census was 140,796, in an area of . The fourth-largest agglomerated urban area in Po ...

), was a Portuguese botanist and taxonomist from the Botanical Institute at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; , ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coimbra in 1537. The university ...

who was married to Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1916–2005), another Portuguese botanist and taxonomist. Fernandes was a student of Aurélio Quintanilha (1892–1987), botanist and geneticist.

Career

Fernandes is noted for his work on

Amaryllidaceae The Amaryllidaceae are a family of herbaceous, mainly perennial and bulbous (rarely rhizomatous) flowering plants in the monocot order Asparagales. The family takes its name from the genus '' Amaryllis'' and is commonly known as the amaryl ...

, and compiling floras of

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

Macaronesia Macaronesia (; ) is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic, North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of North Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of list of islands in the Atlantic Oc ...

and

Tropical Africa The Afrotropical realm is one of the Earth's eight biogeographic realms. It includes Sub-Saharan Africa, the southern Arabian Peninsula, the island of Madagascar, and the islands of the western Indian Ocean. It was formerly known as the Ethiopi ...

. He was the son of José Fernandes (1880-) and Maria Augusta Fernandes (1880–). Fernandes was Quintanilha's student during the academic year 1926–27 and was invited to become teaching assistant in 1927. He became interested in the number and form of chromosomes in different species, later specialising in cyto-systematics, founding and becoming head of a research programme on

cytotaxonomy Cytotaxonomy is the classification of organisms using comparative studies of Chromosome, chromosomes during meosis. Description Cytotaxonomy is a branch of taxonomy that uses the characteristics of cellular structures to classify organisms. In cyt ...

at the University of Coimbra, where he stayed for the remainder of his career. Quintanilha stated that Fernandes's earliest works – including his thesis published in 1930, ''Study on the chromosomes of Liláceas and Amarilidáceas'' – are the first published in Portugal in which chromosomes were regarded as “carriers of the heritable characters”, representing thus “the beginning of a new branch of science among us,

cytogenetics Cytogenetics is essentially a branch of genetics, but is also a part of cell biology/cytology (a subdivision of human anatomy), that is concerned with how the chromosomes relate to cell behaviour, particularly to their behaviour during mitosis an ...

” Abílio Fernandes was married to the botanist Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1 October 1916 – 28 May 2005) and had 2 sons Eduardo Manuel Batarda Fernandes (1943) and José António Batarda Fernandes (1946). Some of her work was published in '' Flora Zambesiaca'' and she did a taxonomic revision of the families

Avicenniaceae ''Avicennia'' is a genus of flowering plants currently placed in the bear's breeches family, Acanthaceae. It contains mangrove trees, which occur in the intertidal zones of estuarine areas and are characterized by its "pencil roots", which ar ...

Verbenaceae The Verbenaceae ( ), the verbena family or vervain family, is a family of mainly tropical flowering plants. It contains trees, shrubs, and herbs notable for heads, spikes, or clusters of small flowers, many of which have an aromatic smell. T ...

and

Lamiaceae The Lamiaceae ( ) or Labiatae are a family (biology), family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint, deadnettle, or sage family. Many of the plants are aromatic in all parts and include widely used culinary herbs like basil (herb), ba ...

.Portuguese Genealogy Net
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Publications

*''Flórula Vascular da Mata da Bufarda'' – Abílio Fernandes & Rosette Batarda Fernandes *''A Universidade de Coimbra e o Estudo da Flora e da Vegetação dos Paízes Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa'' – Abílio Fernandes (1993)

References

20th-century Portuguese botanists Portuguese taxonomists People from Guarda, Portugal 1906 births 1994 deaths {{Portugal-botanist-stub